racters, I say, he might very fairly, though not very usefully, deliver contrary opinions, and defend or oppose any of them hypothetically. But neither the supposition of two doctrines, nor of two senses, nor of two characters, in Plato, that stale artifice by which criticks make authors say or not say whatever they please, will excuse him as a dogmatist, if he was one, and a dogmatist too who treated the most important points of knowledge, since the being of a God, the worship of him, the first principles of things, and the conduct of providence, were some of the objects of it.

My way of thinking, which I have found no where the least reason to alter, would hinder me from any farther consideration of Plato in this respect, if it was not worth our while to consider how feebly the authorities we value the most are often founded. The fathers of the Christian church have maintained, that Plato was a dogmatist, and well they might; since Numenius, a Pythagorean philosopher, asserted the same of Pyrrho, and since Sextus Empiricus says*, that Arcesilaus was suspected to be another. With the paradox concerning Pyrrho I have nothing to do; but surely it is as little possible to imagine what grounds Sextus, who lived four hundred years after Arcesilaus, or St. Austin, who lived above a century later, or indeed any man of his own age, country, or school, could have to make

* Lib. 1, cap. 31.

a dog

a dogmatist of one who disclaimed all knowledge like him, even that which Socrates excepted, the knowledge of his ignorance, as it is to imagine what Numenius meaned when he imputed dogmatism to Pyrrho. A man who made it the business of his life, and the principle of his profession, to dispute against every proposition that could be advanced, was not surely a, sceptick in appearance alone, "primâ fronte," as Sextus says, but inwardly and in very good earnest. Notwithstanding this, St. Austin* took the fact for granted, and wrote up in his warm imagination a very subtile and pious scheme of policy, which is almost too fanciful for the saint, and which no man, less visionary than he can believe, that the philosopher ever entertained. Some such there have been, however, and a reverend father † of the oratory in France has treated this whimsy very seriously.

The Stoicians then, according to St. Austin, placing the chief happiness of man in virtue, that is, in the mind; the Epicureans placing it in volupty, that is, in the body; and the Platonist placing it in the enjoyment of God; the latter judged very wisely, that it was proper to prepare the way to truth by destroying, in the first place, the errours of those sects. They saw, that their own sublime doctrine would fall into contempt, if they published it among men immersed in sense, like the Epicureans, or even among the Stoicians,

* Ep. ad Diosc. Ep. 118, Ed. Bened.

↑ Thoma in de la Manière d'Etudier la Philos.

who

who

gave the preference, indeed, to virtue, but who could not raise their conceptions up to some thing divine and immaterial, to something above mind as above body, to something knowable by pure intellect, and yet far superior to it, that is, up to God. They knew that they should not be heard, if they went about to teach men who believed atoms, or the four elements, to be the first principles of all things, that all things proceeded from an immaterial Wisdom *. They considered farther, that the Epicureans being persuaded their senses never deceived them, and the Stoicians believing, like the Aristotelians, that although their senses might sometimes deceive them, yet they could not acquire, without the assistance of their senses, any knowledge of the truth of things, it would be to little purpose to tell either the one or the other, that the only Being, which has a real existence, cannot be represented to the mind by any of the images of sense, and that this immutable Being is that alone which we conceive truly; because pure intellect, which alone perceives the truth of things, alone perceives the existence of this Being.

Now since Arcesilaus could not flatter himself, that these sublime doctrines would be received, against the philosophical prejudices that prevailed in his time, it behoved him to look forward, and

*N. B. This is said purely to do honour to Plato, for he was absurd enough to make matter and ideas first principles jointly with God.

to

to convey the pure streams that flowed from the springs Plato had opened, as St. Austin expresses himself in one of his letters, through a channel shaded and covered by brambles and thorns, lest they should be exposed to beasts that would render them foul and muddy. Nothing less than a submissive faith, such a faith as he mentions in his letter to Consentius † a faith that must precede reason in order to purify the heart, and to prepare the mind to comprehend what it ought to admit implicitly at first, could impose such doctrines, and nothing less than the authority of one who was God and man could impose such a faith. Now the Platonicians could produce no authority of this kind, nor show a God abased and humbled before the coming of Christ. They were, in the right, therefore, to conceal their doctrines,, till this great event happened. But as soon as it happened, they opened the whole secret of their theology and metaphysicks. Some of them, indeed, were corrupted by the damnable curiosity of magick. But many of them acknowledged Jesus to be that God and man, in whom immutable wisdom and truth were incarnated, and by whose mouth the eternal essence had spoken to mankind.

Such are the notions that St. Austin endeavours to give in some of his epistles, and in his books against the academicks, to establish the opinion,

*To Hermog. Ep. 1, Ed. Benedic. "

+ Ep. 120, Ed. Benedic.

that

that Plato was a dogmatist, and to account for the conduct of his sceptical followers. But this ingenious scheme hangs ill together. What has been said above concerning the motive, that Arcesilaus had to make a publick profession of scepticism, seems much more probable, than what our African bishop advances. Plato had rivals and enemies among the philosophers, Aristippus and Diogenes the cynick, for instance, who embarrassed him more than once. But in his time, and for some time after him, no school grew up that could vie with his. Aristotle, who founded one that became famous, heard Plato twenty years, that is, till Plato died. Epicurus did not come to Athens till Xenocrates was at the head of the academy, nor begin to teach so soon; and Zeno and Arcesilaus were scholars of Polemo at the same time. Thus far the course of the academy glided smoothly on. But here the contest began ; and the subtilties of the portick were the more to be feared by Arcesilaus, because Zeno, who set up this rival school, had been received in the academy, and had learned, like a spy, where and how it might be attacked with most advantage. Other dogmatick sects grew up and strengthened at the same time: and the surest way to divert their attacks was, to attack them all on this one principle established by Socrates, "nihil sciri, "nihil percipi posse." If Arcesilaus had gone about to defend his master's doctrines, which were not easy to be defended, surrounded as he was by enemies, he must have been beat on every side; VOL. VI. E E whereas